Boards

Gonna get this bad boy going well before 10pm as i've hit a brick wall with my Fantasy League wildcard, and need some betting tips as well.

Quite a juicy weekend, really, with City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool all away from home at grounds they've slipped up at in recent seasons. To be honest, i'd take any sequence of results for an entertaining Match of the Day.

Down to FF business, though. Are we all going for loads of cheapskate defenders to bring in a dream team of strikers or what? Has anyone managed to put togetger a goaltastic midfield as well without having sticking loads of ponies from Norwich and Cardiff in?

"Ozil missed training on Friday due to illness and it now looks unsure whether or not the new signing will feature. Ozil did make the trip to the Stadium of Light however, and because no one is sure how serious the illness is, it is not clear whether or not Gunners fans will see their new star in action."

Losing at Old Trafford wouldn't have been a big deal (huge tonking aside), Bayern were always favourites the other week, but Everton are a team well capable of taking points of us but we should really be looking to beat.

Haven't watched owt by highlights of them since Martinez took over so don't know how different they'll be to the brick walls who've overpowered and out-fought us a fair few times in recent years. Stats suggest they've been dominating possession but doing naff all with it, which in theory would play straight into a counter-attacking plan's hands.

13,238/1. i said everton 0-0 chelsea up there but i reckon we should be beating them. it's a shame we've had to wait so long since losing to bayern - if we played them within a week of that game i'd be a lot more confident of a win.

i guess the long distance internationals won't play and be saved til tuesday. fellaini will probably be straight into the midfield. wonder if cleverley will play in a more advanced position like he does for england, perhaps alongside wellbeck and nani in a fluid three.

The Peterborough chairman mentions a hot youth talent on twitter saying he's amazing, how he needs games but will struggle to get in the first side, Chester fan taps him up giving it beans saying we'll have him etc. The next thing you know the Chester scout is brought into the conversation and BAM! Shaq McDonald is on loan for the season. Apparently scored 30+ goals in 20 games in the Posh reserves. The power of social media and fan owned clubs eh?

If they were playing, say, Chelsea or Arsenal at home, or even a top half side away, i'd be all over it, but they could play Palace at Old Trafford a hundred times and they wouldn't lose once. No point putting yourself through it; either they'll win at a canter, or Palace will put up a spirited performance and marginally lose due to some sort of refereeing error or general injustice.

and they spend 20 minutes in the studio trying to re-create it by just picking up hundreds of balls and volleying them at the goal while shouting 'it was a bit like this *volleys*....oh no, like this *volleys*.....one more go...'

A Blackburn fan writes:
In case you haven't been to a bubble match, it's possibly the most tedious experience a football fan can be forced to endure. There are understandably tough restrictions on applying for tickets, but the patience with which most supporters enter the process is gradually eroded by the further wrangles that await.

Unless you live in Blackburn, the demand that fans travel to Ewood Park to then take a coach to Turf Moor before returning to Ewood after the match seems enormously unreasonable. Although I can reach Burnley's ground in little over an hour from my home in Leeds, last season these stipulations saw my journey time quintupled. It was a similar case for plenty of supporters, many of whom live across the north west.

The ridiculous nature of these prevention tactics really hit home when we finally set off after two hours kicking about in the freezing cold at Ewood Park. With helicopters buzzing overhead, we appeared to be in a low-rent version of Speed, only every passenger on board the bus was willing an explosion to happen in order to be spared further misery. The build-up to local derbies is supposed to be full of tension and excitement - instead thoughts wandered to the arduous journey home.

We were greeted in Burnley by a few hundred jeering fans, whose gentle jibes were more an insult to the good name of banter than anyone crammed on the coach. The police had assembled their shiny crowd control barriers to cut off an entire street and universal searches followed before fans sighed their way through the turnstiles and into their seats. "This had better be worth it," was the overriding thought. A 1-1 draw in an atmosphere clearly dampened by the coma-inducing journey certainly wasn't the reward for a ten-hour slog that I had hoped for.

There was one winner, however, in the form of match commander Superintendent Terry Woods. "I would like to thank the supporters for being patient, especially around travel arrangements," said Woods following the success of operation killjoy. "We said from the outset that the overwhelming majority of supporters of both teams are law abiding citizens who are passionate about supporting their football team. The operation was put in place to make sure that people could enjoy the occasion."

The only problem is that no-one enjoyed the occasion. Not even the hooligans, who seem to enjoy everything as long as it's drenched in Carling and Stone Island. It's obviously necessary to take steps to prevent the ugly scenes that have provided a back-drop to Blackburn v Burnley matches in the past, but these steps have far exceeded the legitimate fears of police, clubs and fans, leading to what appears to be a constructive interpretation of 'policing by consent' and the death of excitement.

As supporters prepare to suffer the same experience again and again, it's clear that a compromise must be made. At the moment there is little discourse between frustrated supporters and the police, but for the good of this fixture, and others that are governed by similar restrictions, the bubble needs to burst. Instead of wearing the trip to the lion's den as a badge of honour, Blackburn fans now boast of surviving the gruelling journey down the M65. Is that really the abiding memory you want to tell the grandkids?

He's been so inept for years now and this season he has become the scapegoat for what is wrong at the club. The fact he was made captain this year was mystifying, but he hasn't responded to it positively at all to it, in fact, he's gone backwards. Can count on him to concede a goal a game with his alarmingly regular lapses in concentration.

And now the fans are lampooning him, booing his every touch etc, not surprised he's been been subbed off.

No doubts that Arsenal had HUGE amounts of possession first half, and should have added to their first goal before the interval, but Sunderland dominated second half, and had two goals disallowed, one of which was a complete farce, the other i've not seen a replay of. They also hit the bar and wasted other good chances from set-pieces.

Impressed with Ozil in spells, but tired massively after about 40 minutes. Sunderland actually aren't completely shit. Gardner really changed the game, and Johnson was probably the its best player. They have a lack of quality in the final third, but they'll be fine. As impressed with their work rate and tenacity as i was with Arsenal's occasional counter-attacking prowess overall.

Bit lucky there, but some excellent football at times. Had the sound off, no idea what the hell was going on for that Sunderland non-goal. Also Koscielny needs to remember to take his pills before the game. What a belm. Sort it out.

If Walcott had scored that diving header we would have been on for an early goal of the season contender. But then maybe Walcott is never going to score again, ever. Three very good goals apart from that though. Ozil looks proper quality.

felt like the England game again. Lots of players missing, relatively tough away day so a point and none conceded is a reasonable return but christ on a bike were we poor. Never looked like scoring, Stoke only didn't score through some divine anti-Hughes grace. I never want to see Javi Garcia again and I will suck dick if it means I never have to sit through 180 minutes like that again. I fucking hate football.

is the most interesting thing from Salisbury beating Chester 3-1. Fucking Salisbury?? The big Shaq attack overnight twitter signing sensation from Posh marked his debut by getting sent off within 10 minutes. Great. There's enthusiasm and there's being a tit. McDonald v MacDonald in a pub car park near you soon.

literally no outfield players available from the bench who arent defenders i think. will probably have to play akpom up front against marseille as well. even our most promising youth players are out for two months, ffs.

Miyaichi and Gnabry played - both did well, especially Gnabry who looked like he could definitely do some damage from the bench for the first team. Akpom missed a hatful of chances but looks like a real handful. Not sure he's ready for a first team start though.

I imagine Walcott will play through the middle in the next game if Giroud is injured but there's no reason to think he is at the moment, right?

I put a £10 4-team bet on this morning - United, Arsenal, Stoke, Chelsea, then backed every possible 8-team accumulator of the days games with Spurs, United, Arsenal, Stoke and Chelsea winning (27 in total, 50p per bet). Had Chelsea won i'd have hated my own side for not losing to Stoke and costing me about £1500.

Today I went to see my local side Whyteleafe beat Horley 3-0. Pretty dreadful football but they have a nice setup. They have a kids football in the mornings, my nephew is only three but next year I'm going to take him along. I'm sure he would love it.

For their goal Sissoko managed to get preoccupied with asking who was supposed to be marking Benteke (he was) and muscle his own team mate out of position in doing so, Krul rushes out to try to avert the goal... can't make it - bit of a shambles.

but i've yet to see any evidence so far that Pellegrini has any tactical acumen whatsoever, which is very strange as that's kinda supposed to be his forte. hopefully, just teething problems, but he's made a few very dodgy decisions already, and seems completely incapable of changing games.

...then there's the issue that pretty much most of our senior players - Hart, Toure, Aguero, Silva, i could go on, have been completely winging it for over a year. honestly think it's about time the chairman or owner flew in and kicked a few arses.

people might look at the table and say we're not in a bad position, but we lost to Cardiff, should've lost to Hull, should've lost to Stoke, and unless something improves hugely we won't be beating CSKA or Plzen and United will utterly, utterly ruin us.

nobody knows their job, nobody's putting in even 50% of the required effort, the football, bar a handsome win against the worst Newcastle side i've ever seen, has been Keystone Cops stuff throughout.

on the basis of what i've seen so far, i don't think we'll be finishing in the top four.

but I was watching Al-Jazerra's (sp?) coverage of United-Chelsea the other week and Halsey was a pundit. He was surprisingly forthcoming about not rating certain current PL referees. Didn't say anything particularly scathing but it was still quite surprising that he'd be so candid and not close rank the minute the subject of officiating errors came up.

A £50k golden handshake doesn't seem like much of an incentive to a retiring ref to stay quiet when at the least the first few to publish autobiographies or do media work could rake in several times that, easily.

due to a combination of things - a) signing £45m, £200k a week, world class players, and b) the fact that everything's a bit up in the air at all of the other clubs who have better squads than them (United, City, Chelsea, Spurs).

but i kinda agree. we're big outsiders but have a manageable fixture list till november. if we win all our games till liverpool (big if, but possible) we'll be top in november and then we can start to talk.

if giroud can stay fit till january and keep scoring we'll do well this season. championship's a stretch, but i think we're better than a lot of people give us credit for.

If a team with a recent history of challenging or winning was top then, it'd be a different matter. With Arsenal I'd say that being in touch by the end of February would be time to talk.

You could easily make the argument that Arsenal should have 12 points from their fixtures so far (United and Chelsea at least have had more awkward starts) and so 9 isn't any basis to forecast positively from. I'm not gonna be that harsh myself though.

the villa game we played poorly but wouldn't have dropped the points if it wasnt for the ref being calamitous.

i'm really interested to see how we perform against the big teams. november will be pretty revealing i think. ill be very shocked if we're not top 4 in may, probably not quite ready to hope for better than third though.

also having thought about your list a bit more i wouldn't take any of those players over giroud [insert mocking here]. if ba had come he would have been second choice. hernandez is a quality goal scorer but dont think he'd contribute to our play in the way giroud does which would be a fairly big problem in our formation. really rate sturridge, think hes great for pool and will score a lot this season, hes the only one id maybe push for. michu's a good player, but no. soldado lol. andy carroll obviously good at what he does, also obviously not an arsenal player.

i'm talking about these players in relation to arsenal, if you talk about them purely on their own merits then yes, a more convincing argument can be made for any of them. quite a few of them would be preferable over giroud for a number of teams in the league.

I remember Wenger going on about how "charismatic" Andy Carroll was when he was at Newcastle. Must be the only time anyone's ever used that word to describe him. Could be he has an opposites attract man-crush

Like a morose eel undulating around a sea cow. A sextant interacting with a wrecking ball. A depressed Prussian ordering forward the cavalry charge with a smooth flick of his boot. A black eyed satellite in the cold depths of space coordinating a nuclear strike.

is actually very good, looks weakish on paper and easy for people who dont watch arsenal every week to see stuff like koscielny's brain fart yesterday, or mertesacker being slow etc. and lol.

id worry a bit if vermaelen has to start for any sort of prolonged period. my mate was defending him yesterday and there's certainly some things he does well, but any arsenal side with him starting instead of mert or koscielny is markedly weaker imo.

Apparently the most interesting thing that happened at the Salisbury Chester game was a sky diver landing on the pitch half way through the game. Luckily he never landed on anyone. I've never heard of anything so bizarre happening at a non-league game before.

£275k a week. Think he's undersold himself a bit there, tbh, though it's £75k a week more than THE NEW GREATEST PLAYER EVER, Balealdo. Would've thought that he was in a great position, with his contract running down, and PSG waiting in the wings, to get something mad like £400k a week out of them. Maybe they're paying his tax or sutin.

Fully expect United to announce that they were prepared to offer £100m for him in a few days.